


Pain Into Power

by 24bookworm68



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, F/M, HAROLD THEY'RE LESBIANS, M/M, Multi, Mystery, NOT ambiguous yumikuri, Other, Polyamory, Superheroes, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Worldbuilding, ambiguous BRA, even i don't know if they're dating or not, for jmm, i guess i should tag, more characters and ships to be added later, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-05-31 09:29:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6464956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/24bookworm68/pseuds/24bookworm68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>San Francisco's superhero league has more to worry about than relationship drama - the ever-looming specter of death, a couple of their members having affairs with their own dark sides, villains with personal vendettas, and shady science conspiracies, just to name a few. </p><p>But Jean Kirschtein is gonna worry about his relationship drama anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

San Francisco’s superpowered league hasn’t put Claret’s papers through yet.

This is because his alter-ego, Jean Kirschtein, is a chronic procrastinator and, obviously, didn’t send his forms off until the day before his official move into the crappy SF apartment he’s renting with his cousin, Hitch, and the forms take, he’s been told, a week or two to process. If nothing else can be said about Jean, he’s _consistently_ terrible. Consistency is a virtue, and it’s the only one he has. He’s at least briefed himself on the locals - SF’s league is decent-sized, with its share of veteran heroes and some impressive rising stars.

Including Spitfire, the bonehead who just nearly took Jean’s head off with a flaming car door.

“WATCH YOUR AIM!” Jean shouts, voice uncomfortably screechy with alarm.

Spitfire, skidding to a stop a few feet away, shouts back, voice slightly muffled by the orange-red scarf around the bottom half of his face, “Sorry, bro!” He then sprints back into the fray, where a black-and-blue-green figure Jean can only assume is Frostbite, Spitfire’s partner for the entirety of their careers as superheroes, is fighting a blonde guy three times her size. Not that the entirety of their careers is _long_ , they’ve only been doing this for seven years, which is less time than even Jean.

Screw the paperwork. Claret’s notoriously terrible at following the rules anyway.

He pulls out his trusty pocketknife, makes a tiny cut on his arm. A bead of blood wells up, and it _sings_ to him, itches at something in his brain the way it did when he was eight and first realised he could move it, spending the day making little half-melted towers that splashed into ruin when his mother shrieked behind him. That one bead spawns another and another and another like the ever-duplicating heads of a hydra and then he’s brandishing dark, solid blades.

Claret yanks his hood up, a vicious smile spreading across his face, and goes at one of the trio Frostbite and Spitfire are clashing with, the smallest one, whose blonde ponytail swings behind her like the banner of an army returning home with defeat heavy on their backs and the corpses of their comrades in their arms. She’s not quite finished, just ragged, eyes shining with something only an idiot would mistake for desperation. She spins around, Claret’s blades just barely ripping open her t-shirt, and lashes out with a fist, which he dodges.

Her eyes, surrounded by a shiny blue mask, are a deep blue with spidering white lines spinning out from the pupil. The swing’s brought her close enough that he can see the unnatural shimmer to her skin, the pores that should be there but aren’t. She looks like a doll, blank and not quite real, alabaster and spun gold. One corner of her mouth twists into a feral smirk as a crimson blade scrapes her arm with a sound like nails on a chalkboard - it leaves a red streak, which she wipes away to reveal smooth, unblemished skin. Claret's first day in San Francisco just got really, really hard.

And then she flips him, because that's just how his luck goes.

"Ferrum, Yin!" She shouts, and the other two presumed-villains - the big blonde guy chucking cars and the skinny brunette with a dome of shimmering air around him - come running. Claret is still on the ground, and the dynamic thermal duo is back-to-back, on the defensive. " _Au revoir_!" the blonde shouts, as she and the others jump into a car strangely untouched by the fight - the same shimmer that surrounded the brunette falls away from it as they peel off into the distance, breaking traffic laws along with all the others they’ve definitely trashed today.

Jean struggles up from the asphalt, still a little winded, and is met with a slender, cold hand. Frostbite’s dark eyes bore into him, and she tugs down her scarf to reveal a pretty mouth- pouty lower lip, scar at the right corner, and if he squints he can see the hole for a tongue piercing when it opens, a clear, sweet voice asking, “You alright?”

“I’m probably in a fuckton of trouble,” Jean replies with a groan, taking the offered hand and getting to his feet. Frostbite’s eyebrows jump, and he explains, “I’m not _technically_ licensed in this state yet.”

Spitfire, sliding on a patch of ice and promptly crashing into his unsurprised partner, laughs. “Maaan, you’re lucky Smith’s in charge now, our old admin woulda had your ass.”

Jean smiles a little, half relief and half being addressed as _man_ so easily - the beauty of a new town where almost nobody ever met the him of four years ago and won’t have the excuse of just being _so used to you as a_ girl _, Jean!_ “So this Smith guy’s cool?”

“No,” says Frostbite, deadpan, “He’s a jackass, he’s just more focused on getting the job done than keeping our administrative ducks in a row. It’s a mixed blessing. He insists on the debrief though, so come back to HQ with us, yeah?” Jean nods, reluctantly - he, too, is more focused on doing his job than appeasing the government entity a friend back in New York once referred to as the Political Fuckstick Coalition. At the time he’d just said it sounded like an _amazing_ band name, but the moniker has stuck in his head, the perfect mix of accurate and scathingly vulgar. The thermal duo lead him to a disconcertingly familiar black jeep, parked just outside the site of initial confrontation, as protocol dictates.

“I’m Eren,” says Spitfire, and then he gestures at Frostbite, “And she’s Mikasa, our own resident Ethel Reese -”

“You can't reference heroines from the seventies, and Reese was a complete ninny, you _jackass_!” Mikasa complains, hopping in the driver’s side and shedding her scarf and jacket.

Eren, jumping into the shotgun seat and turning the radio on to a cheery pop song - Jean’s about eighty percent sure it’s Ke$ha - replies, “Who says _ninny_ , outside of bad tv, for god’s sake. Thank you _grandma_.”

“Disrespectful whippersnapper,” Mikasa grumbles, and Jean slides into the backseat just in time for Eren’s jacket to hit him in the face.

After disentangling himself from the fabric - nice and stiff but not too heavy, the local Tailor must be good - and taking in how alike the dynamic duo look - same brown skin, same lopsided smiles, same messy dark hair, that _and_ the matching powers means they must be siblings - Jean says, awkwardly, “I’m, ah, Jean. Professionally though, it’s Claret.”

“Nice to meet you, Jean,” Mikasa says, voice wrapping carefully around his name. She grins at him in the rearview mirror, unfairly pretty, which Jean’s bi ass was _not_ prepared for today.

Eren’s singing, so terrible it must be deliberate, takes over the conversation until they slide into the HQ parking lot.

A lobby is a lobby no matter where you live, but SF tries a little harder for comfortable than New York - a lumpy little couch, pictures of local heroes through the decades hung on the wall. Eren and Mikasa, in uniform, show up in a lot of the more recent ones, with a hodgepodge of other young heroes. The situation room is better - the familiar big, polished table, the map of the city with its lights waiting to go up when somebody flips the emergency switch. A man lounges in one of the chairs at the table, startles upright when the door closes, but then huffs in frustration when he sees Jean, Mikasa, and Eren. He grumbles, “I thought you were Smith. Where is he, even.”

“Hello to you too, Marco,” Eren says with a laugh, tossing himself into another chair. Mikasa joins him, more gracefully, and Jean settles in so he won’t be the only asshole standing around.

Marco sighs, pushing his hands back through his close-cropped, tightly curled hair. Closer up, he has freckles just barely darker than his already dark skin, and a mouth obviously built for smiling. The top half of his uniform is a shiny grey muscle shirt that shows off toned arms.

San Francisco is already so, so fun for Jean.

“The man is a _ghost_. Doesn't he live here so we can get ahold of him twenty-four seven?” Marco asks, rhetorically, as Mikasa grabs a handful of incident report forms from the center of the table and passes one each to Jean and Eren.

Jean sighs and starts scratching out his memory of the fight - he _hates_ the paperwork, it’s so incredibly awful. “Can anybody put me in touch with the local Tailor? Not that I don’t love my hoodie, but,” he says with a shrug - he’d left his old uniform with his old life in New York, and as a close-range fighter without a specific shielding or healing ability, going out without armor is reckless beyond justification.

“That’d be Hanji,” Mikasa says absently, clicking her pen. “I’ll drive you to the workshop - you can finish this, right Eren?” Her brother hums a confirmation, taking her form and making a few quick marks.

Marco gets to his feet, “I’ll come with you, I need to, uh, get new pants,” he says, sheepishly, tugging on his current pants, which have a huge rip in the left leg.

“That’s a lot of blood,” Jean says, alarmed - it doesn't show up much on the dark fabric, but he can _feel_ it.

Mikasa snorts, shakes her head, “Don’t worry about him, Marco never met a weapon that could keep him down.”

“I heal fast,” Marco explains with a nod, shrugging on his jacket and heading for the parking lot.

The Tailor’s workshop is underground, in the heart of the city, and as soon as they walk in Jean is assaulted by the smells of dye and leather. There are bright bolts of fabric hanging from the ceiling, draped over the furniture, and in amongst it there’s big pieces of kevlar, of steel. And in the middle of the whirlwind, a person with wild dark hair and thick-framed glasses, who grins maniacally when the trio step through their door - Mikasa and Marco in their full costumes, Tailors serve heroes _and_ villains, so their workshops are no-man’s-land, but you can't be too careful. “Frostbite, Aster, and a stranger!” the Tailor practically shouts. They point at Jean, “You, fitting room! You know where to get your things, starfish - and do you need anything, or are you just chauffeuring today?” They ask Mikasa, squinting at her and then darting close to pluck at her costume.

“Thank you, Hanji, but I’m fine, your work is masterful as always,” she says, as Marco wades into the chaos and Jean retreats into the fitting room.

Hanji follows him in quickly, banging the door closed behind themself and looking at Jean expectantly. “Alias powers and fighting preference,” they rattle off, shoving their glasses more securely onto their face.

“Claret, biological constructs, specializing in blood, close-range with dual swords,” Jean lists - it’s routine after eight years, he’s been doing this since his early entry into the New York league at age sixteen. These words come to his tongue easier than the name he chose for himself at age twenty-one, some days.

Hanji hums gleefully, spins to a wall of little fabric swatches, and grabs a red so dark it’s almost black. “This, you think?” They ask, and then don't wait for an answer before they also snatch up a matte black and whirl out of the room, coming back with a measuring tape, a kevlar vest, and black boots that, upon further inspection, turn out to be steel-toed and the right size. Jean knows better than to ask how Tailors do what they do by now and just puts the boots on as Hanji measures and fusses. “Three to five days, depending on how much coffee people bring me. It’ll be finished before your license goes through,” they say with a smirk. Jean knows better than to ask. They shove a mask in the shiny red fabric into his hand and usher him out of the workshop.

“They’re… Intense,” Mikasa says apologetically, standing on the curb in her Frostbite gear while they wait for Marco to stop chatting with the Tailor, which is a thing he does often, apparently.

Jean snorts at the understatement, says, “At least I won’t be bored here.” Mikasa snorts, and Marco, emerging from the workshop, laughs a little. Jean counts it as a victory.

Back at HQ, a very muscular blonde man with eyebrows of frightening magnitude sits in the situation room. “You wanted to speak to me, Aster?” He says evenly, and Marco nods and follows the big guy who must be Smith out of the room.

Eren pokes his head out of a door to the left. “Thank fuck,” he says brightly, “He was interrogating me about earlier, I was _not_ about that today. Shift’s almost over, anybody want ice cream?”

Obviously, the answer is yes.

~*~*~*~

“So when are you two getting married?” asks Connie’s brother from the other side of the skype call.

“In _this_ economy?” Connie shoots back, and Sasha, curled up on the other side of the laptop, snickers. He shoots her a grin, three years together and that stupid dorky smile still gives her butterflies. It’s as annoying as it is endearing.

A snort, “Don't give me that, you have better job security than the president.”

“What if we just don't wanna get married yet?” Connie grumbles, and Sasha squeezes his leg, finding the delicate and elusive balance between comforting and painful, as she slides off the bed in the direction of the closet, tuning out the continuing debate from the bedroom.

It’s a mixed feeling, seeing their costumes - on the one hand, they’re a reminder that they help people, and the coordinated designs - Hanji had known they were dating almost as soon as they did, somehow - are a reminder of the life they’re building together. But, increasingly often, they make Sasha think about the life expectancy of a superhero. She doesn't want to do that.

She drapes Connie’s gear over his head, checking that the laptop is firmly closed before she shucks off her civilian clothes to stuff herself into her costume. “Thanks, babe,” Connie says from within his jacket, slipping his pants on without moving the rest of the outfit from his head.

Sasha laughs, pushes the jacket aside so she can dart in to kiss him, and he smiles against her mouth, reaching around to tie her hair back for her. Very efficient. Night shift has made them good at multitasking - it’s better than when they were on different shifts though. They should pull away, finish getting dressed, but for just a second they want to pretend that they're the sort of people who have all the time in the world.

“I love you,” Sasha mumbles when they finally separate, forehead pressed against Connie’s.

Through her barely-open eyes she sees him smile at her. “I love you too. C’mon, we’re gonna be late.” There’s silence for a second as they get dressed, and then, “Hey,” she looks up to see him beaming, “You’re beautiful.”

“You too, dweeb,” she laughs back, and then they slide out into the night.

At HQ, Franz and Mina have obviously been waiting for them, because Franz is playing something on his phone and Mina is portalling an apple around the room. Franz is unsurprised when they come in - he would've heard them coming, the man has the ears of a goddamn bat, second only to his wife, who _actually_ has super senses - but Mina startles and drops her apple directly on Connie. “ _Fuck_ , hi Mina,” he says, with customary good humor, rubbing at his head.

Mina pops _out_ and then back _in_ in front of them, hands fluttering, “Shit, shit I’m sorry,” an icepack pops into existence in her hand, and she presses it gingerly to the area of impact.

“You’re getting better at doing that without looking,” Franz says approvingly, and Mina grins at him over her shoulder - she grew up with parents who called her powers unnatural, didn’t get much practice until she moved away. Franz and Hanna, practically family to her the last two years, take every opportunity to praise her developing skill. “Keep it up you might get stuck hauling my ass out of trouble all the time,” he teases.

Mina laughs, “Like I don’t do that already?”

Franz nods in acknowledgement, lopes across the room and promptly shoves a walmart bag at Sasha. “For babysitting,” he explains. The bag holds not one but _two_ five pound candy bars, because Franz is a good friend and knows the way to Sasha’s heart.

“Connie, he bought me chocolate, can I invite him to bed?” She stage-whispers urgently - it’s an old joke, one everyone is already rolling their eyes at.

Connie, still being fussed at by Mina, responds, “With both of us, or - eh, I don’t think Hanna would go for it.”

“You’re hilarious, guys,” Franz grumbles fondly.

“Foiled again!” Sasha exclaims in mock-frustration, and then goes in for the hug because she has yet to pass up an opportunity for a Franz hug, and doesn’t plan on doing so. “In all seriousness, you didn’t have to, you know I love Penny,” most of the league does - Franz and Hanna’s four year old daughter is a bright spot in their often-dark lives. They all take what they can get - Penny, Eren Jaeger's terrible jokes, Petra Ral's giant dog that she brings in for a visit when she thinks morale's low.

“Let’s get going,” Mina says finally, locking her elbow around Sasha’s and heading for the door.

Sasha laughs, glances over her shoulder at Connie. “See you in a minute, sweetheart!”

“See you in a minute, sweetheart,” he returns wryly - another in-joke, a sentiment that started out genuine but is said more for the sake of saying it by now. It doesn’t carry the same weight as _goodbye_ or _I love you_ , it doesn’t come out sticky with fear.

Patrolling with Mina would be more fun if she didn’t practice as she walked, not only popping _herself_ in and out at random places, but Sasha keeps ending up on top of buildings and having to figure her way back down. If Mina didn’t smile so wide it’d be really annoying - Sasha reminds herself that she accidentally crushed the oven when her powers developed at age twelve. Mina is allowed to have her fun too, and she’s not costing anybody hundreds of dollars doing it, unless they count a minor diversion while working as a waste of tax dollars. Admittedly, Sasha can think of a couple Fox News reporters who would, off the top of her head, but she hasn’t paid attention to news about herself since the misgendering incident of twenty-fourteen so it’s almost like they never say anything about her at all. The league is teaching Mina the importance of not caring what the assholes say about her along with everything else.

Sasha’s just figuring out how best to swing off a Victorian which probably cost the owners an arm and a leg to restore - although why they did it in such a nauseating color she does _not_ understand and doesn’t really want to - when she hears a loud _yelp_ from the ground.

Mina pops _in_ on the roof next to her, looking startled with a coil of something green around her wrist. “EVIL _FUCKING_ VINES?!” She yells incredulously before Sasha can get a word in. In response to her partner’s questioning look, she rips the green thing off her wrist and shoves it in Sasha’s face. It’s a tough, ropy length of _something_ \- upon further examination it’s clearly a plant, clearly recently alive.

"You're moving slowly enough that plants are growing on you?" Sasha jokes half-heartedly. There haven't been reports of any people with power over plant matter in SF since the 1980s when the unfortunately-named Deciduchess was killed in action, and nobody’s registered with the league.

Mina grins in anticipation, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. "A new villain in town," she says gleefully, leaving the fact that it's her first unspoken. Not like Sasha or anyone else needs reminding, Mina's often lamented the fact that she turned up just a little too late to go after Adamant, Ferrum, and Yin when they were still new to the game.

Nobody's had the heart yet to remind her that that was a bad time for all of them - in the _first_ battle with the trio _alone_ Sasha broke her arm in two places and cracked four ribs, Mikasa was out of commission with a skull fracture for a couple of weeks, and Marco took a blow to the gut that _would_ have killed someone without his healing factor, even with Sasha’s speed helping the hospital trip along. She isn't thankful for much where villains are concerned, but the fact that those three mellowed out after their initial spree is the sort of thing that convinces her that her mother might be right about a kind, forgiving god. She woke up in the middle of the night from nightmares of Connie - who doesn’t heal fast, who can’t dodge, who relies on strategic distraction and unconventional problem-solving even against villains that are _forces of nature_ in their own right - bleeding on the sidewalk for _months_ after that first fight, muffling sobs into her pillow and trying not to wake the boyfriend in question up. It rarely worked, but thankfully after the first half a dozen times he stopped asking what she’d been dreaming about.

There are vines creeping across the ground, menacingly fast, like an army of headless snakes, getting thicker as they go. Something in Sasha’s stomach squirms at the sight. “Get the boys, I’m gonna go check it out,” she says softly, and ignores Mina’s whine of protest. She’s taking off towards wherever the vines started as soon as her feet hit the ground, a blur through the streets and she can only hope that the rest of the team is behind her. The vines get thicker and thicker - they look like squirming green tree trunks by the time Sasha catches a glimpse of her new adversary.

The figure is short, and slight, but Sasha of all people knows that sometimes the little ones are the ones that can dropkick you through a townhouse and then laugh at you. They almost blend into the vines, wrapped head to toe in shades of green, shiny jewelry hanging off of them, more dropping down from little tendrils of vine - dripping like rainwater as the little figure snickers gleefully.

“Now,” Sasha says, slipping on her reinforced gloves, “What’s a nice kid like you doing in a place like this?” The quip is beyond cliche, and that’s when she knows that her backup isn’t there yet - she doesn’t hear Connie groan. She nods to herself. It’s not the first fight she’s handled alone, and it won’t be the last.

The figure turns with a _swish_ of moving fabric, and then there are vines wrapped around Sasha’s wrists. “Ain’t a nice kid, ma’am,” the villain says in a southern accent so exaggerated it has to be fake, and then yanks their hands back like pulling strings, and Sasha has to scramble to keep from sprawling across the ground.

She tests the restraints idly - hard for an average person to break, but Sasha Braus benches half a ton on a good day. She grins, wickedly, and snaps them both, rushing at the stranger and pinning them to the ground before they can say _whoops_. “That was cute, kid,” she says calmly, “But you should research the local names before you start wrecking our city, yeah?”

There’s a high, clear giggle from behind the mask. “And you,” they say breathlessly, gesturing with their head, “Should make sure your orders get followed.’

Sasha’s heart drops to her shoes as the thick vines shift, revealing a pale figure wrapped up in them - Mina. She’s unconscious, blood dripping from her nose, with a vine wrapped around her throat.

“You can’t kill me before I kill her,” the villain in green purrs, “S’like crushing an ant. Just a little _twitch_ , aaand,” they trail off with another laugh.

Sasha knows her limits. She knows when she’s pushed herself too hard, when she’s stretched herself too thin, when she’s run up against one of her lines in the sand.

She is not losing any of her people tonight.

“Go,” she whispers, voice hollow and flat with the effort of keeping her rage inside where it can’t hurt anyone. She shifts back, off her opponent, and watches resentfully as they get to their feet.

“Name’s Maculata,” they chirp, gathering up their stolen treasures with obnoxious confidence. “You’ll be seein’ more of me, so you should know. I always keep my promises.” There’s an arrogant gesture, and the vines around Mina sink away, wrap into a bubble around Maculata instead.

Sasha is a forest fire, an inferno, a tower of righteous fury. She forces her hands to be gentle as she picks Mina up anyway.

Franz and Connie finally show up a block away, looking startled and confused. “She didn’t get you, right?” Sasha says, resigned.

Connie shakes his head, and Franz says, calmly but with great feeling, “ _Damn_ it, Mina.”

“Are you taking her, or am I?”

“I’ve got her,” he says, looking exhausted and _old_ all of a sudden. “Streets are all piled up because of whatever the hell that was, you’d run somebody over.”

Sasha hands over her wounded teammate without protest - Mina is limp and pale but her breathing’s steady - and watches Franz fly off until she can’t see him anymore.

And then, calmly and deliberately, she strips off her gloves and punches the side of a building. God, they could have lost her. They could have lost her, they could have had to hold another _goddamn_ league-funded funeral, Mina could’ve been another name on the long, long list of heroes killed in action, and all because Sasha didn’t stop to make sure she’d done what she was supposed to. She punches the building again, half-strength because she’s yet to meet anything in this world that can hold up against the full force of her. She is a hurricane, she is a wrecking ball, she is _unstoppable_.

And she lost tonight, because she didn’t _check_.

“Did that help any?” Connie asks, half sarcastic and half genuine in that endearing way only he ever seems to pull off.

“Never does, babe.” Sasha mumbles, letting her anger go because she will never find a way to work it all out, and then she starts walking towards HQ.

~*~*~*~

The night is a popular refuge for the morally corrupt.

There’s something about darkness that makes it easier to do things that would make everyone who ever told you _you’re better than this_ turn away.

Not that Farlan needs the night for _that_ anymore. Everyone who’s ever expected better from him is gone, one way or another, ( _red hair red blood no no no oh god what did we do what did we do_ ) and he hasn’t asked forgiveness for anything in years. But it’s still comforting. For a boy that never learned a mother’s embrace, the night’s arms have been a welcome substitute.

He really, really didn’t want to come here tonight.

The door creaks when it opens - _damn_ thing, the whole point of picking the lock was to be _quiet_ \- and he smacks his head against the wall twice, rhythmically, and then gives up and decides to get a snack while he’s here. The place is _nice_ , nicer than anything he could afford, nicer than what the current inhabitant could’ve afforded the last time they talked.

Levi slams the lights on and whirls into the kitchen with a baseball bat, which is just excessive.

“Team Good’s made you _dramatic_ , buddy,” Farlan says around a mouthful of peanut butter crackers.

His once-partner looks at him for a second, still holding the baseball bat, like he’s trying to add two and two and coming up with seven. “...I was always dramatic. What the _fuck_ .” He puts the bat down, finally, on his formerly-spotless countertop. “You forget you’re not supposed to sneak up on me, or what?” He snaps and Farlan knows he’s thinking about - _god_ \- the day it all went wrong.

He almost regrets the surprise. “Got a proposition for you, Levi,” he says casually.

“I don’t do that _shit_ anymore-”

“You will this time!” He snaps, and his - friend? Ex-partner? Ex-a-lot-of-things - startles, both at the interruption and at the tone. Even before everything, he wasn’t used to either from Farlan. He works it out, after a second, facts slotting into place behind his eyes - time was, Farlan was eager to go along with the plans that came out of that look. He misses that time, but they buried it, along with a hell of a lot else.

Levi's fist clenches on the countertop. “This,” his voice cracks and he looks not-quite-pissed about it for just a second, “This is about Izzy.”

( _Red hair red blood what did we do where’s he going oh god oh god not her should’ve been_ me _._ )

“Isn’t everything?” Levi concedes the point with a sharp nod, and Farlan continues, “I know how you love revenge, pal, so I say again - _got a proposition for you, Levi_. Unless you’ve been drinking the kool-aid around here and think you’ve got morals now.”

He recognizes that look. It always means a bad day for somebody. “Point me towards the fucker and see how moral I am.”

Farlan grins.


	2. Chapter 2

Tailor’s workshops make most people uncomfortable.

One of the first things anybody ever told Hanji about their job was that it’s _thankless_. That it makes people on both sides of the law uncomfortable, the idea of a neutral party who knows everybody’s secrets - and more than they even know they’re giving away, more than they could even guess.

Not that Hanji is unfamiliar with the idea of making people uncomfortable. They’ve done _that_ for as long as they can remember, too loud too smart too _much_ , too hard to stuff in one box or another. They had a foster sister who called them _freak_ more often than anyone else said the name they used at the time. That was a bad home, a terrible one, and their foster mother with her too-nice smile had baked cookies in the morning and chopped their hair off in the afternoon because _boys don't wear their hair long, not in my house, you will be the proper little gentleman god wants you to be_ -

They hate thinking about that family. There’s a reason to forget almost all of them, really, a reason to forget every house that wasn't a home before they found the life they didn't know they wanted. Nobody knows they’re meant to be a Tailor until the life grabs them by the arm and tells them _you are not alone_.

The feeling of people _wanting_ to be around them is a more foreign one than the nauseous little _swoop_ they still feel in their stomach when people look at them like they have two heads, like their words are like wolves - they have _teeth_ and should be feared.

They feel a _swoop_ of an entirely different kind when they walk into the main room and see Petra Ral sitting on their stool.

She smiles when she sees them, frizzy red hair dancing as she tilts her head, a fairytale girl for the twenty-first century, beautiful and glamorous in a way that's so _real_ it almost hurts, real like a sunrise over the ocean, real like the northern lights. “Did you forget our breakfast date?” She asks fondly.

“Hell,” Hanji responds, eloquently, and Petra laughs - it would be romantic to say she has a musical laugh, like a bell, but the reality is that she snorts a little. Hanji can’t keep themself from smiling. “Just a minute, I have to get changed, spilled dye everywhere earlier.”

“Funny enough, I noticed that,” Petra replies with a nod.

“At least it wasn’t fungicide this time?” Hanji says as they move into a changing room, pulling out the spare set of clothes they keep stashed in the bench.

As they step into the main room again they say, “Hey, hey, Pet. _Petra_.”

“...What?” She says cautiously, elegantly thick eyebrows raising.

Plastering on their most charming smile, Hanji says, “ _¿Te perdiste? El cielo está muy lejos de aquí._ ”

Petra groans, lightly, as expected, “The pickup lines were bad enough in english, _why_.”

“Thank youuuuu, duolingo!” Hanji crows, tying their mass of brown hair back with a grin.

“I’m leaving you,” Petra says, covering her smile by reapplying her ruby-red lipstick.

“But honey, think of the kids!”

“And by kids, you mean my dog,” she says with a shake of her head - another bounce of her curls, sunlight spreading through them, changing the matte copper glow ever so slightly. Hanji is perhaps more entranced by her than they should be.

A voice from the stairs calls out, “ _You’re_ the one that called her _hija preciosa_ last tuesday.” And Petra and Hanji turn to see Levi sliding into the workshop - one of these days, Hanji promises themself they’re going to spin fast enough to watch the change from the Captain to Levi. They’ve never seen the process, just observed the differences, the Captain straight-backed and stern, Levi a little closer to the wise-ass New York punk that they think he must have been before everything went to shit. “You look like a creamsicle,” he tells Hanji, eyebrows raised, and he looks at ease the way the Captain never does.

Hanji grins, twitching at their pastel orange skirt with their fingertips. “I _know_ , right?”

His eyebrows raise a little more, impossibly, and he says, “Well, as long as it’s intentional,” lips twitching with fond amusement as Petra hops off her stool and over to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and gently pressing her mouth into his.

After how long they’ve been doing whatever they’re doing ( _a year, three months, eight days and ten hours_ ), he should stop looking so shocked about her casual kisses, should stop looking at the both of them like they’re going to vanish between one heartbeat and the next.

Then again, given his history, it isn't so shocking, and Hanji shouldn’t dwell on that - like their history of being an outcast isn’t what makes them so ecstatic fitting into their little three-person microcosm? Like they don’t know that Petra is so free with her affection because of a year spent watching her mother fade away? History informs everything about their relationship and enough people hold the past against Levi Ackerman without his lovers doing it too.

“Come on, dweebs,” Hanji says, to avoid thinking too hard. “I want enough coffee to kill a horse, where are we going.”

Levi blinks at them, nods a little to himself, and says, “Ah. Honey Honey - you like their sausage scramble thing. My treat?”

Hanji cuts a look at Petra, whose eyebrows twitch in concern. “You good, baby? You sound tired,” she says mildly.

“ _Fine_ ,” he grumbles, exasperated, “I was up late, you know how I get.” And the thing is that they _do_ know that. It’s a little disheartening after a long streak of okay days, but Hanji and Petra know as well as any other two people on the planet that the human brain does not have a convenient switch to flip and make everything good again, so they let it slide because the downside of being the only family somebody has is that sometimes you just have to give that person a break.

“Honey Honey with my honey and honey,” Hanji says brightly, to a duet of groans, as the trio leave the workshop - a tight knot of warmth and affection, leading each other into the sunlight.

~*~*~

It’s a rare thing, catching Annie Leonhart looking relaxed.

Rarer and rarer as the years go on - they’re all aging stiff and unyielding, and Annie was that _before_ everything went to shit. The tense lines around her eyes and mouth ( _pain and anger and fear_ ) only ever really disappear when she’s sleeping, nowadays.

Reiner would like to know when he became such a goddamn creep.

He turns back to the schematic on the table, leaving Annie to her thankfully-deep sleep, and ignores the noise from across the room that could, if he was feeling like fighting with Bertholdt, be interpreted as a snort. ( _He’s not feeling like fighting with Bertholdt. He’s been feeling like it less and less as time’s gone on, being more indulgent of his own aching head/limbs/chest/everything and more and more afraid of the pain in Bertholdt’s face what seems like all the damn time now_ .) ( _They need to figure this out. None of them are saying it but they all know._ )

They sit in near-silence for a few minutes, the only sounds those of water in the pipes and three people breathing in hard-learned unison.

Annie makes a choked sound and Reiner hears the little _pop_ of a ruined couch cushion, and the silence goes thick and soupy. “How long was I out?” she asks, and Reiner opens his mouth to answer but then finds that he doesn’t know. He’s not sure if he did know and just forgot or if he never knew at all, and it sends a bolt of cold up his spine.

“An hour,” Bertholdt says softly, with _that_ tone in his voice, the one that means he disapproves, and he’s going to worry, but he’s not going to bring it up so they can just fight it out. Reiner bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. There’s a lot of things they aren’t talking about.

“Why’d you let me sleep?” Annie asks, not quite accusatory but in the same neighborhood.

Reiner accidentally bends the edge of the table, gripping it, and bites out, “Because you were exhausted, don’t be a martyr about it.”

“We’re all exhausted, don’t act like wasting time is helping us,” she fires back with an impossible sort of calm, settling into the chair beside -

 _\- beside him in the darkness, eyes practically glowing blue in the dim light, and he can hear Bertholdt’s labored breathing on his other side, he wants to go_ home _he wants his mom and dad, Annie says, “Don’t waste time, they won’t stay out forever,” and tugs on his elbow insistently, too grim for how little she is, too grim for the sparkly blue scrunchie she was wearing the first time they met - she’s since lost it._

_They’ve lost a lot of things._

_“We gotta get_ out _, Reiner,” Bertholdt whispers, grabbing his other arm -_

\- arm, nails pinching at sensitive skin, “Come on back,” Annie says with mostly-uncharacteristic gentleness, and he nods oncetwicethrice, shaking off the memory as well as he can. His head aches -

\- _aches from when that guard slammed it into the wall, and Bertholdt’s shaking like a leaf, holding on tight as Annie leads them through the hallways._

_“You’re sure they won’t be able to stop us?” Reiner asks, and Annie huffs a breath but doesn’t answer. Reiner doesn’t let himself interpret that, following the little pale figure as well as he can in the dark._

_A guard rounds the corner and Bertholdt raises his hand -_

\- hand comes into view, holding a glass of water and shaking so little that Reiner can almost convince himself it isn’t happening at all. Almost. “Breathe,” Bertholdt says, that shaking hand leaving the glass on the table and floating up to press into Reiner’s forehead. There’s two more on him, pressed to parallel spots on his back and chest. _Safe_ , whisper the hands, _Safe, home, safe, warm_.

He passes out.

~*~*~

Frostbite gingerly stretches her shoulder as she walks back into HQ, yanking her mask down so it hangs around her neck like the world’s biggest tacky pendant while Aster closes the door behind them.

And suddenly they’re just Mikasa and Marco again, hidden away from a world that asks for everything they can give and then more, more, more after that. Marco’s soft, endearing smile spreads across his dark face, and Mikasa’s heart flutters a little - she thinks of warm hands, she thinks of bruises that vanish just as they form, she thinks -

 _Not on the job!_ shouts a furious little voice in her head, so she stomps the warm feeling in her chest down until it curls up somewhere around her toes.

“Sorry about that out there,” Marco says, mouth twisting into a grimace, nodding at her shoulder. Maculata had tossed her into a wall after Mikasa sliced their arm up with an ice spike, because she’d expected Marco to move with her like Eren does on the battlefield. It’s not Marco’s fault, it’s hers for being so used to fighting with her brother. She can’t count all the people who’ve criticized her for not being adaptable enough.

She pushes her hood back off her head, remembers to match her face to her feelings and grins back at him. “Ah, I zigged when I should’ve zagged, don’t beat yourself up about it. Are we still up for saturday?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he replies with a crooked smirk.

( _Not on the job!_ )

Eren - Spitfire, she can’t let herself stop referring to him by his codename when they’re in a professional context, but it’s _hard_ , harder with him because he’s _Eren_ and he’s _hers_ , chubby starfish hands and grins in the glow of a backyard campfire and hair in her fingers. Her brother, her responsibility, the action to her thought. She hates change, even when it’s only temporary.

Think of the devil - Eren’s curled up on the couch with an icepack on his forehead. Mikasa says, almost despite herself, “What the _fuck_ did you do to yourself this time?”

“I’m fine, your concern is appreciated,” he says dryly.

“I turn my back for _five minutes_ ,” Mikasa groans, walking up and poking him in that spot on his chest that he hates. He glares at her but says nothing. Smart boy. “‘ _I can patrol with the new guy’_ you said, _‘what could go wrong’_ you said -”

“I did _not_ say that, do I look like the dead cheerleader in a horror movie?”

“- and you go and do something stupid, _of course_ , I don’t know why I’m even surprised,” she finishes, not bothering to respond to his comment. He huffs at her, and she snatches the ice pack away and replaces it with her hand. “Seriously, though. You look baked, and not in the fun way.”

“Done yelling?” he asks, reaching up to bat her hand away.

She growls at him, twists to her feet and goes back to the HQ’s kitchen for a bottle of water. Just outside the door back to the lounge she hears, “You’re _dead_ , man, your scary sister is _going to kill you_.”

Eren laughs at the new guy’s comment, “Nah, Mikasa’s really a big teddy bear, trust me.”

“ _Am_ I?” she asks, stepping into the room.

“ _Fuck_ !” Eren yells, and almost falls off the couch. Jean, next to him, goes a shade paler than usual. Mikasa throws the water bottle at her brother’s head, which is a little bit satisfying. “Stop _doing_ that!” he snaps, catching the bottle and glaring at her.

“Why? Gotta know when you’re talking shit about me, bro.” She pats Jean’s shoulder on the way by, swats Eren’s head before she sits on his other side.

He twists so he’s leaning back on her, still glaring. “I’m gonna be too paranoid to talk to anybody, one of these days, and it’s gonna be your fault. Impeding my social development, or whatever.”

“I didn’t buy that in third grade, not buying it now,” Mikasa says absently, petting his hair for just a second, and then looks at Jean. “Wanna tell me what this dumbass did to himself?”

“I don’t even know, there was a fuckton of fire,” Jean says, exasperated. “Known the fucker for five weeks and I’m already tempted to pick up smoking, please teach me your patience and self-control.”

Eren kicks him in the shin and is promptly given the finger. “Task at hand, boys?” Mikasa half-groans, and Eren very aggressively sticks his tongue out at her.

“Adamant was going berserk, you know she’s hard to fight,” he grumbles, and then chews on a fingernail and doesn’t look at anyone in particular. “Let’s say I got slightly more full of hot air than usual? Heh.”

Mikasa does not have the words to articulate her annoyance. Patience and self-control, her _ass_ , if she wasn’t so attached to this _stupid fucking boy_ she could just snap his neck sometimes.

That feels wrong to even think - death is too common in their line of work. The person at your back turns into a corpse, or something in them breaks in a way that can’t be fixed, in one way or another, physical or mental or what-have-you, with a visceral _crunch_ of bone or a wail that splits the air like lightning.

 _Can’t lose you_ , she thinks, curling cold fingers a little tighter around the hair they’re tangled in. She can’t say the words, but she’s always known he doesn’t need to hear them.

Jean breaks the silence of the moment with all the grace of Bambi in the first five minutes of the movie, lurches to his feet and pulls on the hoodie he left on the chair when they left for patrol. Mikasa’s starting to understand that for all of Claret’s subtle danger, Jean is not someone who enjoys quiet and stillness. No wonder he’s getting along with Eren, who is at least partially composed of pure chaos. “My cousin should be here soonish, if I’m not out front she’ll leave me here - _such_ an asshole - and I’ll end up locked out of the apartment. Again.”

“Ask your mom for an autograph if you talk to her,” Eren says absently.

“Feel better, dumbass,” Jean says with a roll of his eyes as he slides out.

“Drink some damn orange juice, fuckhead,” Eren shoots back, and shifts around so he’s curled up on his side.

Mikasa tugs his hair a little and asks, quietly, “What’d I miss about his mom?”

“She’s the Roman Candle, don’t you ever google the people we work with?” And _now_ Mikasa gets it - the Roman Candle, in her heyday, was known as one of those heroes whose power had limited offensive capability but _hell_ if that was going to keep her from being effective. A demolitionist who used her power over wax constructs to beef up her controlled explosions. Eren, for obvious reasons, had always liked her.

“ _Jean_ ’s mother? Really?” Jean the broody close-range fighter, with his blood and deadly efficiency? Mikasa grew up watching footage of the Roman Candle, with her outrageous technicolor uniform and her wild laugh. “She must be a lot more mellow than the old tv spots make her look, I mean _shit_.”

Eren’s laughter fills the room.

~*~*~

The girl watches from a nearby roof as a big man with bigger eyebrows and a lanky shape with greasy hair stare at a dead body like it has some sort of secret to the universe.

He’s been dead for days, she knows, and before his body was dumped it was thoroughly sanitized. The bad man isn’t stupid - a lot of things, but not stupid. The girl watches Eyebrows and Stretch dispassionately - she doesn’t care about them, and she doesn’t care about the boy, and she doesn’t even care about the bad man and his bad plans. But the one person in the world she gives half a rat’s twitching ass about is wrapped up in this so tight she can barely breathe. So the girl watches, in a stolen body even smaller than the one genetics and environment gave her.

“It’s Wagner, isn’t it?” Stretch asks, voice regretful in that tired way that means he’s seen enough death to devastate a man twice his age but it still bothers him because he can’t stop caring about every person he meets.

( _The girl thinks she might have been that way, in another life, a million years ago. She’s been so many people it’s hard to keep track of a girl that the world blew into dust._ )

Eyebrows sighs, presses the weathered hand of his single arm to his forehead. “Yeah, it’s Wagner. Can you smell who did it? Was the vanishing girl involved?”

The girl thinks she likes that moniker. Vanishing girl. She who disappears.

“You know I can’t smell her, Erwin, I have limits and fu- _flipping_ _shape-shifters_ are one of them.”

The corner of Eyebrows’s mouth twitches. “Watching your language, my friend?”

“Nan’s niece is in town, don’t start with me,” the lanky man grumbles, and the girl doesn’t know if she’s appalled at men who can tease with a corpse at their feet or if she admires their ability to find humor even when the darkness of the world stands in front of them waving a flag and shouting obscenities.

“Careful, old man, first you’re saying _flipping_ this and _flipping_ that, next you’re telling the whippersnappers to get off your lawn. All I’m saying.”

“Sometimes the temptation to kick the shit out of you is almost irresistible.” The men grin at each other and ignore the body, so the girl looks at it. It’s what the boy deserves - he’d fought the darkness for _days_ , the stubborn thing, and if it hadn’t hurt _Her_ the girl would have applauded his effort. Wagner. It wasn’t his fault, not really, but the girl can’t forgive the line like a canyon in _Her_ forehead.

She moves on, sliding over rooftops as she shifts back to the body she never had to steal. She will enjoy a few moments of relative peace where she can find them.

And then the warehouse comes into view and she shifts again, and she is the obnoxious guard that always takes his smoke break this time of night. The girl has been doing this forever, it seems like. She is in the old office in what feels like no time, and then she’s face to face with _Her_.

The whistle is loud in the relative quiet - an inside joke, seven notes of an old song, _another one bites the dust_ . The girl whistles back, and _She_ pushes her hair back from her face with her chained hands and smiles her rare smile.

 _She_ is beautiful in the moonlight, beautiful as her lips shape the girl’s name - or what might as well be her name, anyway, “ _Krista_. You came. I thought you wouldn’t.”

“Of course I did, don’t be ridiculous,” the girl whose name wasn’t always Krista replies, folding her borrowed body so they’re sitting together, facing each other, almost close enough to touch. Almost. If she ignores the chains and the hands that aren’t hers, she can almost pretend they’re two normal girls having a normal chat. Almost.

“I wanted to see you tonight,” says Ymir, and there’s a thread of disappointment in her voice.

“I’m here, you’re seeing me,” Krista says, trying for a smile.

“You _know_ what I mean. I wanted to see _you,_ ” she whispers, and the temptation to let go, to slip into a body that those dark eyes have roved hungrily, desperately, is so strong. It hasn’t happened often, but _oh_ , that look, the one that makes Krista feel like a real girl, like the only other real girl in a world full of monsters and liars and coin-operated impostors, that look makes her feel _alive_ on the days she thinks she may never have existed at all.

She shakes her borrowed head, decisively. “Not tonight, they almost found us out last week, you know we can’t afford to take chances.”

“Look at you being sensible,” Ymir grumbles, looking like all she wants in that moment is to be an idiot about this. Krista is tempted, but all she has to do is think of the bad man and how he would punish her beautiful girl. _That_ , she cannot have.

 _You’re going to_ live _, you stubborn thing_ , she thinks, spitefully, but her hands are slow and careful as she pulls a lollipop out of her bag. “A taste of the outside world for you,” she says with a little smile - they don’t touch, but she relishes the almost-childish joy on Ymir’s face, as short lived as it is. “They found that boy you ripped up.”

“Yah?” Ymir asks around a lump of cherry already turning her mouth brighter red.

“Mhm. What was his power again?”

In answer, Ymir’s fingers twitch and twist, and a very small statue flies into her hand. “He had a magnetic personality,” she says dryly.

Krista’s borrowed face scrunches up in a genuine snort, “ _Heh_ , you’re so terrible.”

“You love me, you know you do,” she says, and it’s supposed to be a joke but it slips out too close to pleading.

Krista leans a little closer, “ _You_ know I do,” she says firmly - and then Ymir’s grabbing the front of her borrowed uniform - and then there are lips on hers and she feels long blonde hair fall around her ears - and -

\- she separates their mouths with a _pop_ , big blue eyes looking into Ymir’s brown, and “ _What the fuck are you thinking_ ,” she hisses out, shifting back hastily. She’s been here too long, the real guard will be back any second, _fuck_ , she is not going to get the only person in the world she cares about anymore killed, _fuck fuck fuck_.

“I had to do it once,” Ymir says with a shocky, trembling little laugh. “You don’t know what he has planned - you don’t know what’s coming, _but I do_ , I had to do it just this once.”

“What are you _talking about_ ?!” Krista half-shrieks, just barely remembering to keep her voice soft, and it comes out squeaky and _young_ , she didn’t sound this young even when she was a child, even before everything went wrong. “You - _You_ ! He’ll hurt you, he’ll kill you, _what did you do that for_?!”

Ymir laughs again, humorlessly but stronger, “Don’t be stupid, sweet girl, he won’t kill me. I’m the gun, not the one he points it at.” Her smile is devilish, it is sharp and deadly, it is everything they’ve made her. “Now _go_. Fly away, pretty bird, I won’t let them cage you.”

“You _idiot_ ,” Krista says mournfully.

“I know,” Ymir says, and that smile widens. “But I had to do it once, before there’s too much blood for you to touch me through.” Krista wants to say _that doesn’t make sense_ , but it does, and she wants to say _I watched you kill a man who didn’t do anything wrong and I still wanted you more than I’ve ever wanted anything for myself_ , but the words stick in her throat.

She leans in for another kiss, even as she hears the door open. It’s slow, and warm, and gentle, and everything neither of them can afford to be. “Make it out of this -” _Alive_ , she wants to say, but that’s not the word. ( _“I’m the gun.”_ ) “- _you_ , and we can get a repeat performance every day for the rest of our lives, I _swear to god_ , Ymir, just _make it out_.”

“I won’t make you a promise I can’t keep,” she says, a little afraid and a lot angry.

Krista wants to answer that, but she said from the beginning she wouldn’t let Ymir’s chaos kill her.

She promised.

 _Fuck_.

She’s gone by the time the second door opens.

**Author's Note:**

> THIS FIC IS A MONSTER, if you don't follow me on twitter: i've been planning it for over a year!!! it has a lot of worldbuilding!!! and. eight planned character deaths. BUT, I PROMISE, IT ENDS HAPPILY. STRAP IN, KIDS.


End file.
